FitBit One

Two years ago, I purchased an Oregon Scientific Pedometer off REI Outlet as a “trial” for whether I would actually use a Fitbit, and therefore justify the price of a Fitbit (which I had seen and heard about from a colleague for years). Initially I only planned on using the cheap one for a couple months, then upgrading, but a couple months turned into two years. So, I purchased a FitBit One for my “christmas” present, and just started using it. The review will be rather short, since it’s a pedometer, but all and all, I’m extremely happy. The unit is half the size of the Oregon Scientific, so it still fits in my coin pocket. It’s rechargeable, and while the specs say it should last about 10 days on a charge, mine seems to last about 2-3 weeks between charges. The screen is OLED, and shows steps, distance, floors (the unit has an altimeter), time, and some flower I haven’t yet figured out.

The best thing about it is with the Oregon Scientific, I was having to manually add steps to the database once a week. And if I forgot to do this, I would lose days/steps. Thankfully, this was extremely rare. Since the FitBit autosyncs with my computer, and then with the FitBit site, I was able to leverage their API with some PHP to have a script run daily do download the previous days steps. Holes, such as vacations would create, are resolved at the end of month when a script runs to update all the step counts for the previous 45 days (which should help avoid issues if I was on vacation spanning the end of a month).

I am extremely pleased with the unit, and would highly recommend purchasing one. As to why I didn’t get the Force or the Flex: I just don’t care for things around my wrist.